Various theories exists regarding this term's application to poor white Southerners. One theory holds that it originated with disadvantaged corn and wheat farmers ("corncrackers"), who cracked their crops rather than taking them to the mill. Another theory asserts that it was applied due to Georgia and Florida settlers (Florida crackers) who cracked loud whips to drive herds of cattle, or, alternatively, from the whip cracking of plantation slave drivers. Yet another theory maintains that the term cracker was in use in Elizabethan times to describe braggarts (see crack ‎(“to boast”)). An early reference that supports this sense is a letter dated June 27, 1766 from Gavin Cochrane to the Earl of Dartmouth:

I should explain to your Lordship what is meant by crackers; a name they have got from being great boasters; they are a lawless set of rascalls on the frontiers of Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas and Georgia, who often change their places of abode.[1][2]

It stated to one of the company's operators, “The Phantom, the system cracker, strikes again . . . Soon I will zero (expletive deleted) your desks and your backups on System A. I have already cracked your System B.

2002, Steve Jones, Encyclopedia of New Media (page 1925)

Likewise, early software pirates and "crackers" often used phrases like "information wants to be free" to protest the regulations against the copying of proprietary software packages and computer systems.